TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2003: John Allen Muhammad, one of two suspects in a series of October 2002 sniper shootings in the Washington, DC, area that killed 10 people and wounded three others, pleads not guilty to four murder charges.

OTHER EVENTS

1066: Normans under William the Conqueror defeat the English in the Battle of Hastings.

1529: Turkish Ottoman ruler Sultan Suleyman II ends the first Turkish siege of Vienna.

1806: Napoleon Bonaparte defeats Prussians at Jena, and Saxons at Auerstadt.

1912: Theodore Roosevelt, campaigning for the US presidency, is shot in the chest in Milwaukee. The bullet hit a metal eyeglasses case and a thick paper copy of a speech he was to give, making the wound relatively shallow, and he went ahead with the scheduled speech.

1933: Germany leaves disarmament conference and League of Nations.

1936: Belgium renounces military alliance with France.

1939: A German submarine sinks the British battleship Royal Oak in Scapa Flow, with loss of 833 lives.

1944: British and Greek troops liberate Athens from Germans; German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel commits suicide rather than face execution for allegedly conspiring against Adolf Hitler.

1947: US Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager becomes the first person to fly faster than sound as he tests a rocket-powered research plane over California.

1960: The idea of a Peace Corps is first suggested by Democratic US presidential candidate John F Kennedy to an audience of students at the University of Michigan.

1964: US civil rights leader Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Jr wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1968: The first live telecast from a manned US spacecraft is transmitted from Apollo 7.

1973: Sanya Thammasak, university administrator, is named premier of Thailand after violent clashes between troops and students.

1982: Vietnam turns over to US officials the remains of five Americans believed to have been murdered in Cambodia under Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime.

1986: Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel wins the Nobel Peace Prize.

1987: Governor General Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau resigns after Fiji is declared a republic following two coups d’etats.

1989: Jordan officially launches its first national election campaign in 22 years.

1990: Israeli Government decides against cooperating with United Nations team investigating shooting deaths of 19 Palestinians at the Temple Mount.

1991: Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi wins Nobel Peace Prize for her struggle to achieve democracy in her homeland.

1992: A judge in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, convicts Andrei Chikatilo of the sex murders of 52 children and young women over a 12-year period. The horrific nature of the crimes makes Chikatilo one of the worst serial killers in history.

1993: Within hours of a United Nations police team pull-out of Haiti, gunmen assassinate Justice Minister Guy Malary, creating another setback to plans for ousted President Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s return.

1994: Israeli leaders Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres share the Nobel Peace Prize with Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat.

1995: Greece lifts its embargo on the former Yugoslav republic of Macedonia, which agrees to change its flag and declare that it has no claims on Greek territory.

1996: Truckloads of Taliban soldiers reinforce their battered defences north of Kabul, Afghanistan, after losing two strategic towns to former government soldiers.

1997: Dozens of protesters shouting “Clinton go home!” burn an effigy of US President Bill Clinton and throw manure on his limousine, marring an otherwise smooth visit to Brazil.

1998: Wole Soyinka, Nobel laureate and a critic of the Nigerian Government, returns to his homeland for the first time in four years and is greeted by jubilant crowds.

1999: Former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, the father of Tanzanian independence and a symbol of Africa’s hopes as it emerged from the shadow of colonial rule, dies at 77 of leukaemia.

2000: Alija Izetbegovic, who led the Bosnian Muslims through Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II, resigns from the Bosnian presidency, leaving power in a manner rare in the Balkans.

2002: Britain suspends the Northern Ireland Assembly, saying direct British rule was being introduced over the province because of “a loss of confidence on both sides of the community.” It was the fourth suspension since December 1999.

2004: Soldiers attack kidnappers holding two Chinese engineers near the Afghan border, killing all five of the militants led by a former Guantanamo prisoner who Pakistani officials say has ties to al-Qaeda.

2005: The famed La Scala opera house closes its doors along with most other Italian theatres and cinemas as performers and staff go on strike against planned government budget cuts they say will cripple funding for the arts.

2006: The United Nations Security Council votes unanimously to impose punishing sanctions on North Korea for its claimed nuclear test, declaring that its action posed “a clear threat to international peace and security”.

2007: A landslide triggered by local residents digging for rumoured deposits of gold in an abandoned mine kills at least 21 people and injures 26 in southern Colombia.

2008: Syria formally recognises Lebanon by establishing diplomatic relations with the nation.

2009: Iraq’s Government says at least 85,000 Iraqis were killed from 2004 to 2008, officially answering one of the biggest questions of the conflict — how many perished in the sectarian violence that nearly led to a civil war?

2010: The United States endorses fragile Afghan efforts to negotiate peace with the Taliban, backing off its prior stance that talks with the Taliban were premature until the war is all but won.

2011: Britain’s Defence Minister Liam Fox quits his post after days of allegations about the influence-peddling of a close personal friend who joined key visits overseas and posed as an unofficial aide.

2012: Extreme athlete Felix Baumgartner lands gracefully on earth after a 24-mile (39-kilometre) jump from the stratosphere in a daring, dramatic feat that officials say made him the first skydiver to fall faster than the speed of sound.

2013: Gunmen in Syria release three Red Cross staffers and a Red Crescent volunteer who had been kidnapped in rebel-held territory.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Eamon de Valera, Irish statesman (1882-1975); Dwight D Eisenhower, US general and 34th US president (1890-1969); Mobuto Sese Seko, Zairian dictator (1930-1997), Cliff Richard, British singer (1940- ); Roger Moore, British actor (1927- )

— AP